Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

She smiled. “DCR Holdings.”

Dorion, Colter, Russell.

So. His father had a safe house, where he had met with his colleagues as they planned the demise of BlackBridge. And the house was still operative.

He told his mother, “These people — Braxton and Droon — probably know about you and Dorie. I’ll call Tom Pepper. He’ll pull strings and get a couple of watchers — here and outside Dorie’s.”

“I won’t object to that. But...” Mary Dove lifted the tail of her blouse and revealed the grip of a Glock, the .45, sitting in a hip holster. “We’re good for now.” She let the cloth drop and turned to a cutting board, saying, as if she didn’t have a care in the world, “Dinner in a few hours. Alert the crew.”

Colter Shaw and Victoria Lesston sat on the porch in the Compound. The hour was nearly midnight and a stately crescent of moon sat high in the inky sky.

The Santa Anas were relaxed at the moment and the residual breeze was merely warm and comforting. The soundtrack was the rustle of stalky plants, owls and distant coyotes, the occasional wolf.

He had a beer, she a glass of wine. Chase sat at their feet. His ears would prick up occasionally, maybe hearing or smelling a potential intruder. But nothing drove him to his feet or rose hackles. Shaw could settle him with a soft, “Okay, boy.” There was a collar around his neck connected to a leash looped around Shaw’s chair leg. Night was predator time, and Shaw wanted to make sure the rottie didn’t go off to defend the kingdom in the face of insurmountable odds.

The cabin was dim and quiet; everyone else had gone to bed.

The two of them talked and talked, sharing stories.

Shaw spoke of the Never rules of his father’s making, and the survival skills he’d taught the children, which paralleled much of Victoria’s training in the military.

“What branch?” he asked.

“Delta Force.”

The special ops branch of the Army.

Victoria explained that 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, known more commonly as “the Unit,” had been recruiting women soldiers for the field, not desk assignments, for thirty years.

They compared notes on incidents that had occurred on his reward jobs and her security work. Immersion in ice water. Making a weapon — and a particularly insidious one — out of a rosebush. Various sustaining, if disgusting, improvised meals in the field.

He told her about the time he and his fourteen-year-old sister had rappelled down a three-hundred-foot cliff to avoid a pack of wolves at the summit.

“They only hunt at night,” was her reply.

“That’s a fact.”

“Well,” was her response. “That means you did a descent in the dark. You have moonlight?”

He said no and asked if she’d had any unusual descents.

“A few.” Spoken in a deflecting way.

“Okay. How far was the longest?”

“I don’t know, about four hundred.”

“Not bad.”

A moment of debate apparently. “Okay, actually, it was yards.”

A quarter mile straight down.

Shaw said, “You get the trophy.”

They sat in silence for a moment, until Victoria stretched and winced, as the shoulder took some unexpected stress.

“Think I’m feeling tired,” she said.

He was too.

Shaw walked her to the bedroom that had been Dorie’s. The decorations were mostly prints of Native Americans, wild animals, dogs and, for some reason, old-time locomotives, which his sister had been obsessed with as a girl.

When they stopped, Victoria turned to face Shaw. Her maneuver was of a certain caliber, sure and unmistakable. She lifted her hair away from her face. Colter Shaw put his hand on her good shoulder, leaned slightly down, and kissed her firmly. She pressed fully into him. Chase was gazing at them with that look of blended understanding and confusion that only dogs can muster. After a too-brief quarter minute, Victoria eased away.

“’Night,” she whispered and walked into her room.

The weather in Gig Harbor had changed considerably from the last time he’d been here.

The sun was brilliant, not a wisp of fog or cloud to be seen. The green swath of pine was radiant, the water blue as sapphire.

Shaw steered the Winnebago through the entrance gate. The two pillars holding the cast-iron panels were crowned with angels made of concrete. The poor creatures were grimy and their wings weather-smoothed.

He braked to a stop and scanned the grounds. The battered, green pickup truck he sought was not far away. He steered toward it and parked behind. Taking an 8-by-10 envelope from the seat beside him, he climbed out of the camper and walked up to the man who stood over a new grave.

“Mr. Harper.”

The broad-shouldered man appeared startled, apparently not having heard the camper arrive and park. He frowned, thought a moment. “Shaw.”

Adam’s was a simple tombstone. Name and the dates of birth and death. No angels, no bas-reliefs like in the Study Room in the Foundation’s camp.

The name on the neighboring tombstone was Kelly Mae Harper.

Shaw said, “There’s something I want to tell you.”

A shrug of the man’s big shoulders.

“When Adam was away for those three weeks, after your wife died?”

Stan Harper’s response was a tip of his head.

“You said when he came back his moods were better.”

“Was like when he was a kid, when he was happy. His troubles didn’t hit until he was a teenager. What’s any of this matter, Shaw?” A glance toward the grave at his feet. A ragged: “He’s gone.”

“Those three weeks he was away? He was in a cult.”

“Cult?”

“It’s been in the news. Osiris Foundation.”

Looking blankly at the ground, Stan muttered, “And?”

“What the cult taught was that after we die we come back.”

“Like... reincarnation?”

Shaw said, “Something like that.”

“And Adam believed it?”

“Yes, he did. It gave him comfort. Before he died he was convinced he’d be with his family again. In another life. His mother, you.”

Harper grunted a laugh. Shaw couldn’t tell what his reaction to this odd news might really be.

“That’s all bullshit. All of it. The church too. Heaven, hell. Way I feel anyway. After Kelly.”

“It meant something to Adam.”

Stan was silent.

“Here.” Shaw handed him the envelope. Harper looked inside and extracted Adam’s Osiris Foundation notebook, the one Frederick had given him.

Harper glanced at the cover. The Process.

“It was Adam’s. Like a diary. He wrote down his thoughts and memories. What he liked about his life, what he didn’t.”

The bad feelings — anger, fear, sorrow — and the good ones — joy, love, comfort. We call them — how clever is this? The Minuses and the Pluses...

Shaw had skimmed it. The passages weren’t very grammatical, they rambled and ranted. There were irrelevant doodles. But some of the Pluses included memories of times spent with his father.

“I don’t want it. Why would I want it?” He stuffed the notebook in the envelope and handed it back, then glanced down to the grave. “Don’t know why I came. Thought I’d feel something. Thought I’d think something.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Harper.”

The man didn’t reply.

Shaw started back to the Winnebago. He was halfway there when he heard. “Hold on.”

Harper was walking up to him. “Maybe I’ll hold on to that. Just... Well, maybe I will.”

Shaw handed the envelope to him.

Harper took it and returned to his pickup, fishing keys from his pocket.

The Winnebago was parked in a Walmart lot near Tacoma.